Lovett
by Our Pale Companion
Summary: In the aftermath of the terrible scene found at 152 Fleet Street, an undated letter was found in the bureau of Mrs Lovett. These details were never made public...until now.


I, Nellie Lovett, widow and piemaker of 152 Fleet Street, betrothed and beloved of Mister Sweeney Todd, who was formerly Benjamin Barker, of the same, being of sound mind and body, do hereby give my sworn statement.

All I ever wanted to do was make pies, honest. Ever since I was a nipper and I used to watch my old nana gut a pigeon and strip it down and shove it into pastry, I knew that's what I wanted to do until me fingers was as bent as hers. Nana made the best pies, truly, I never did quite figure out what she did to make them so good. Even though it was more bread than meat, and her pastry never quite crisped up the way it's meant to, I swear to the divine that it was the most delicious thing I ever ate.

Course, she didn't have much competition. Mother couldn't cook the shell off a pea - that's probably why father was always so angry with her. "Work, Nellie," he'd tell me, "makes a man hungry and thirsty," which is why he spent so much time down the Three Compasses come the end of his shift, I imagine. And course, by the time he came home he wasn't thirsty no more - and more often than not, he'd come home to nothing at all on the table. "Harriet, you good-for-nuffink cow!" he'd bellow at mother, and he'd throw me and my sister Dot out of the house and shoo us off to nana's so we didn't have to be upset by his shouting. He was thoughtful like that, was father.

And so nana would make us her pigeon pie, and we had the time of our lives there! I never wanted it to end. So, whenever I gets upset, I just close my eyes and imagine I'm in nana's room, with her little stove and her window that didn't close, waiting for one of the pigeons that lived in the awnings to fly back in and for her to grab it with those big, bent claws of hers and dash its brains out on the counter - oh, how I laughed to see its silly little head fly across the room and land in the chamberpot! Dot never laughed. I think she missed mum and dad.

Father did used to shout at mother an awful lot, but to his credit he did knock it on the head when I was coming up to me eleventh year, on account of her being dead. Well, he never did say so - he always told us she'd run off with our Uncle Henry - but I knew he was just trying to spare our feelings. Little things gave it away - the way he'd clam up when her name came up, that time I found her boots in the latrine, that we didn't have an Uncle Henry. In any case, after that, it was just us and dad. Not long after that, it was just me and him when Dot ran away to join the convent. She never said which one, though, so it's no wonder I've not heard from her since.

Blimey, I don't half run away with meself when I gets talking, don't I? Pies is where it all started, is what I'm trying to say. So, back at that age girls are getting all sorts of hints from their father that they need to leave home - locking you out the house, renting your room out to lodgers, throwing beer bottles at your head - I said to meself: Nellie, if you're going to be a married woman, you're going to marry a man what can make pies. And it just so happened that the most illegible bachelor in all of Fleet Street was Albert Lovett, piemaker extraordinary, a man of fifty-five - years, and inches around. First time I clapped eyes on him, punching that great ham of a fist down into a pile of dough, my heart just melted. Course, I never knew that one day my heart would flutter like a butterfly for another man entirely, but little Nellie was hooked on him. The way he used to pound his meat when I caught his eye never failed to make me giggle. Lord, but that man knew how to tenderise a steak.

The five years I spent with my Albert were like heaven on earth - I was a proper homemaker, caring for a good man with all the pies I could eat. But, in the end, poor Albert's health began to catch up with him. I did all I could to help him - when the doctor said his heart was giving out, I made him his favourite food four times a day to cheer him up. A nice bit of lard pie never hurt no-one, did it? I just count my blessings that although it took five lads and a crowbar to pull him out the outhouse when he went, I know for a fact he didn't die hungry.

And this is where my Mister T comes into the story. Course, back then, he was Mister B - Benjamin Barker. I was still wearing the veil, mourning for my poor Albert, but grief has a funny way of showing you what you need, doesn't it? I remember, clear as day, the moment him and his wife, that Lucy, walked into the shop asking about the room upstairs. It was like an angel came down from heaven, dusted my heart off and put it right in his hands. I knew he'd be the one to make me happy, irregardless of whatever marital nonsense he'd got himself in. He said speed was of the essence, what with Lucy being eight months gone, so they'd be happy to pay three months' rent in advance. I think he said something about an inheritance, but tell the truth, I'd have let him have the place for two smiles a week. Maybe even one on a good week.

Time came and baby Johanna was born, proper little bundle of joy she was. All hours, crying and griping - I heard them arguing through the floorboards. "It's your turn to change her!" "No, I did it last time!" On and on and bloody on! Sometimes I'm glad Albert and I never managed to conceive - marital relations were not exactly his forte, I shall leave it there. I saw how it took a toll on them; they still showed bright and shining faces to the world, as one is meant to, taking Johanna out for strolls in her pretty little pram, wearing their Sunday best. But behind it...behind the smiles, they was falling apart. I saw it in the way they would look at each other. All that love he had in him when I first met him, all that was gone. He looked hard, cold. And she...she looked sad. So sad. Sometimes I heard things from upstairs; heavy footsteps, slamming doors, the thud of something heavy hitting the ground and staying there. Sometimes she wouldn't leave the house for days.

Mister T started coming down to the shop a bit more frequently then. Never to eat - don't blame him - but always for a gin. Soon as the work day was done and he'd shut up shop, he'd come straight down and plonk himself in his corner, drinking glass after glass of it. It was like he couldn't face climbing the stairs to their rooms and seeing what his life had become. I felt sorry for him, of course - beautiful man like that, reduced to a shell of a thing cos of a nitwit wife and a screaming brat. I started ministering to him then; not every time. But enough times. Some nights after a few gins when all the other customers had gone and I was locking up the shop, he'd fix me with a look that turned my innards into jelly. And when we got down to it...bloody Nora. Talk about your knee-tremblers. Some days I had trouble walking.

His lawful never quite cottoned on, I don't think, but she hated me all the same. Never looked at me when we crossed paths, wouldn't let me in the house - and me her landlady and all! Never seen the like. Think she blamed me for Mister T turning into something of a drunkard - he was fond of his gin back then. Business suffered, naturally, especially after he hadn't quite recovered from a session the morning after and gave Mister Tully from the bank the widest smile he'd ever had. But it was after that that things started to change; he stopped his drinking, he got his customers back, and sure enough he stopped coming down to the shop.

Oh, I tried to get him back, Lord knows I did. I'd bring a pie up to his shop every lunchtime - he even tried to eat them at first. But eventually he started changing his lunch hours so he was always away when I called. To tell the truth, I couldn't stand it - I had tasted heaven, and it was in his arms. Underneath him I felt as young and free as I had when I was a slip of a thing and that longshoreman had...well, you don't need to know that, do you? So, with me head all in a tizzy, I decided to do the only thing I could in my capacity - have them evicted.

But it was when I was at the courthouse trying to secure the eviction notice that the judge called me into his chambers and proposed an "alternative", as he called it. I'd not met Judge Turpin before, but his coldness went right through my heart; behind that big oak desk in that dark, draughty room, it felt like he was weighing up my very soul for damnation. He had a big, ruby-red nose, and he was sweating even though it was October. He told me we might be of mutual help to each other - I wanted Mister T, and he wanted Mister T's Lucy, and he had himself a plan. See, the judge had recently come into possession of some half-inched jewellery - a string of pearls, to be exact, finest things I ever saw - and he felt it would benefit all parties if these were found in Mister T's possession. That way he could swoop in and place the lady and her child under his custody while Mister T was in prison - only a couple of months, he told me. He'd see to it that he'd go light on him, he promised. I nearly shook his hand right off his arm, I don't mind telling you!

So I snuck upstairs one day while Mister T was out avoiding me, jimmied up a floorboard and lay them underneath. I must admit, for a moment I considered pawning them and legging it - they must've been worth ten times what the shop was. Don't know why I didn't, to be honest - maybe I was just too infatuated with him. Too keen to get my revenge. Mister Todd's not the only one who's let vengeance cloud his judgment.

The Peelers came for him while he was working; dragged him out into the street in his apron and everything. Lucy came screaming down the stairs to him, baby Johanna in her arms, and I recall a sergeant just straight boxing her in the gob for her cheek. It was then I knew things weren't going to go the way the judge had promised. I went to the trial, hoping he'd keep his word, but that slimy bastard twisted the knife good and proper. Transportation to Australia - I'd never see my beautiful Mister T again! Oh, how I cried that night. Rocking by the fire, burnt pie-crust roasting and stinking all around me. I felt like I might never stop. It didn't get better the next day when Lucy came back to the house - she'd turned down the judge's offer of protection, something that had never crossed his mind, or mine, to be honest. I made sure to stay out of her way; I didn't want her confronting me in case I let something slip. I'm tight-lipped and I can keep a secret, but this was one big old secret, too big for my little mouth. But I saw, every day, the judge standing across the street, beckoning to her to come down. She never did - despite everything, I admired her for that. A woman's got to have her principles.

But eventually, even she folded; that odious little toad the Beadle tricked her into attending one of the judge's masked fancies, and it was there he had his way with her. I'll never forget the surprise I got when I saw her at the door of the shop, just after dawn, scratching at the glass with bleeding fingers and hands and a dress ripped to shreds. Of all the places in all the world, she came here, to me, to my pie shop, for help, right after the judge had molested her - I guess I was the only person in the whole world she thought wouldn't do her harm. Sad, that, isn't it?

I cleaned her up as best I could and put a brew on. She had a strength to her - strength that had resisted a gilded life as the judge's mistress. She told me how she was going to expose him; go public with the awful things she'd seen and experienced at his party, make sure he strung himself up in shame. I smiled and nodded but inside, I was panicking; a woman who'd do all that, go up against an enemy that powerful, would stop at nothing to get her husband back. She'd wait till the end of the world for Mister T to be sent home from Australia, and she would never waver in her devotion to him.

So you see why I had to act. I told her I was making her a cup of my special tea - straight from China, I told her, and guaranteed to calm you down nicely. It was special tea, alright - Assam leaves and a spoonful of arsenic (we gets terrible rats around here). I plastered on my best smile and put it in front of her. Seemed to take her an age to actually pick it up and drink it. She was only halfway through when it started to take her. I remember the way her eyes rolled back, the way her back bent like it would break, the horrible foam around her mouth. I got to my knees and held her head, stroking her hair and cooing her - I'm not a demon, I don't wish anyone a slow and painful death. I was just trying to make her passing a little bit easier, you know? I told her she was going to be with her Benjamin and her struggles stopped. I imagined she had passed, so I wrapped her in sackcloth and stuck her in a wheelbarrow; I tried to make it to the Thames with her, but I got spooked around Blackfriars and legged it back to the shop. I tried to calm meself down; tried to tell meself that river or not, she was dead, and that was my problem sorted out.

Can you imagine the state of me when she wandered back down Fleet Street a few weeks later! Wild-haired and filthy, half the size she'd been and talking nonsense; seemed the arsenic had burned her mind right out of her head. That was a relief, I tells you. Last thing I needed was her pointing the finger at me. Little Johanna went to live with the judge after all, and Lucy...well, Lucy's just the mad beggar woman of Fleet Street now. One of many.

And the rest is history, I suppose. Mister T came back here after returning from Australia and I filled in the gaps for him - plus or minus a few omissions, obviously - and thereafter we began our enterprise. And it's not been a bad one, has it? I mean, of course, it's a shame about all them people we had to off, but no-one can deny that we had one hell of a business going for a bit. And if nothing else, I can look back and say this:

I made pies. The best pies in London.


End file.
